As Cisco prepares for Cisco Live Melbourne #clmel, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight our @Ciscocloud Intercloud partnership with Telstra

The following Q&A session between executives of our partnered companies identifies the unique challenges of our current business environment and the rapidly changing needs of our customers. Interviewed by Stuart Robbins, the participants in our inaugural blog are Ken Owens, Cloud Services CTO from Cisco, and Tim Otten, GM Cloud Strategy and Platforms from Telstra.

Q: Cisco’s strategy is to create solutions built upon intelligent networks that solve our customers’ challenges. As a key technology partner, Telstra’s diverse customers present unique opportunities for a new generation of solutions for those customers – can you tell us about how our combined capabilities will help those customers be successful?

A:
[Otton, Tim J] Networks are increasingly important to the delivery of services as we shift to “the Cloud,” and the concurrent profusion of data, workforce mobility, distributed application environments, and the hybrid infrastructures supporting those applications. Both Cisco and Telstra are committed to delivering highly secure, high-performance intelligent network capabilities.

These networks must be thoroughly responsive to an ever-changing set of user and application requirements – adaptive, flexible, and resilient. Both companies have a rich tradition of global insight gained from a relentless focus on customer requirements.

[Owens, Ken] Telstra is one of the industry’s most advanced solution providers, with a noteworthy history of successful technology transformations in telecommunications. From the earliest days of IT outsourcing, and managed hosting, and now as we shift to the Cloud, Telstra has provided true leadership to the industry during these transformations.

Like Cisco, they view their customers’ strategic objectives as Priority 1 and will do whatever is necessary to make their customers successful. For more than 25 years, Cisco and Telstra have guided the market through each new technological shift, with exceptional people leading the way.

Q: One aspect of the changing enterprise landscape is the “blurred” boundaries between large enterprises in business ecosystems. While the basic principles remain important (resilient architectures, reliable networks, responsive applications), what are some of the emerging challenges in this “ecosystem first” world?

A:

[Otton, Tim J] The business landscape has changed. Cloud, Mobility, Social Media, advanced analytics, and open platforms are also changing the landscape for service creation and innovation. Increasingly, service creation will emerge both within and beyond (intra- and inter-organizational) boundaries to better serve a growing number of mobile users and a project-oriented workforce.

In order to support connectivity as well as enable full integration with many external partners and providers, businesses are now required to ‘open’ their IT environment. Increasingly, organizations are choosing to expose their own systems and proprietary data to third-parties, creating “greater value” by encouraging innovative use of a company’s intellectual assets. Software applications are distributed, both geographically and architecturally. All of these factors alter the connectivity/security paradigms of traditional enterprise IT.

[Owens, Ken] Tim is right on, and the exciting element of this model is that it’s driven by the customer! This is not a consumer fad or one-time remodel, this is the pace and speed by which business must adopting to the requirements of their customers and the rapidly changing marketplace. A successful business today requires a flexible set of services and capabilities to quickly adapt to this changing landscape. Together, Cisco and Telstra have a proven track record of enabling innovation to address the changing needs of the businesses we support.

Q: Providing exceptional products and services to Enterprise IT is familiar territory to both Cisco and Telstra, and this common ground is one reason why the Cisco-Telstra partnership makes great sense. As we move beyond IT, we’re also being asked to directly address the needs of business departments (marketing, product management, customer support). How do we adapt to meet those needs?

A:

[Otton, Tim J] We need to develop a deeper understanding of the different “lines of business” within the Enterprise. We need to better understand what drives their business and the market environments in which they operate. In other words, we need to become an enabler of business solutions rather than simply selling more technology. Our focus needs to be increasingly on the business outcomes we can deliver to our customers.
We need equip our sales teams to communicate those solutions, to be able to engage customers in conversations that start with business issues and proceed from there to provision enabling technologies rather than starting (and often finishing with) technology alone.
At the same time, we need to better support IT departments so that these services can be integrated into the overall Enterprise network architecture- – -ensuring that these distributed services are secure, and optimized to perform reliably. Telstra and Cisco need to be seen as enabling partners, and not just suppliers.

[Owens, Ken] The needs of the business can be vast, complicated, and rapidly evolving to meet the needs of a changing marketplace. Cisco and Telstra are leaders in business transformation. The key to success in this ever-changing environment is to provide leadership with speed, agility, innovative leadership to assist each customer’s ability to adapt to the changes. Of course, Tim’s right, we also need to help IT executives quickly transition not only their technology, but also their processes and practices.

Q: The recipe seems simple enough = one part: exceptional technology with the associated expertise, and one part: an evolved partnership methodology (i.e., Partnership 2.0) that will serve as the foundation for what our companies can accomplish together.

One last question. Imagine what success looks like for the joint Cisco-Telstra effort in two years: what are the core behaviors/values that we’ll be most proud to have embraced, when we glance back? In other words, what are the central organizational principles that will serve to anchor this new style of ecosystem development?

A:

[Otton, Tim J] My vision for the partnership is that we have developed an advanced understanding of the requirements of stakeholders – whether it be IT, LOB, or end-users – within the customers we served and are singularly focused on the business outcomes that we can jointly deliver for our customers.

[Owens, Ken] The demands of Enterprise 2.0 require an infrastructure that is both elastic and reliable, flexible yet secure. Organizations, too, will require those very characteristics. To accomplish this,“Governance 2.0” and “Partnership 2.0” become framework components of that new ecosystem in service of our customer’s transformed world. As Tim stated, the business outcomes and continuously delivering business value are the key principles.

Thank you Tim for you time to discuss the joint journey we are embarking on.

Last April, Rob Lloyd walked on stage at PS14 and announced our Intercloud strategy. Fast-forward to Cisco Live! last week, where Gee Rittenhouse and Faiyaz Shahpurwala were on the main stage talking with customers and partners about how they’re already bringing Intercloud to life. Cloud was one of the hottest topics this year. No wonder – in a relatively short time, we have become a force to be reckoned with in the world of cloud.

It was exciting to see the Cloud, Software, and Managed Services engine step up a gear at Cisco Live!. Keynotes, demonstrations, booths, and breakout sessions were all about cloud as an enabler for capturing the Internet of Everything (IoE) opportunity. We need to build on that momentum, because the transition is happening now, and it’s happening fast!

There’s a real ‘start-up’ energy to this proactive disruption we’re driving. Accenture is only one of the many industry “big hitters” amongst the 45 partners that have joined us. Together, we will make Intercloud do for the cloud what the Internet did for all those disconnected, proprietary networks back in the ‘80s.

Are you wondering if we have the credibility to lead the charge? Let me tell you … yes, we do! Read More »

Forrester research indicates that private cloud has entered into the formal IT portfolio by becoming a core part of data center strategy. I have been writing about the sea change underway in private cloud. This sea change means that automating the provisioning of virtual machines and their infrastructure is inadequate in a world where your users expect continuous delivery.

Application developers want to accelerate application stack design and deployment. Your customers expect to consume applications and their supporting infrastructures on-demand and take delivery within minutes.

Doubt this fact? I consistently hear from senior executives about the growth of shadow IT within their organizations simply because the data center cannot meet delivery expectations.

At CiscoLive Milan today, the Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite was introduced. I can hear your response now…..What another cloud management platform? So I will respond: no way!

Many of today’s solutions are simple toolkits that require IT administrators to customize and maintain integrations between tools, processes, applications and teams. IT needs to become software and infrastructure engineers. End users have expectations of simplicity and out-of-box operation and these tools simply frustrate meeting end users expectations.

Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite is an engineered software solution not a platform. It delivers a hybrid-ready private cloud software solution that contains out-of-box installation and content. There are out-of-box utensils designed specifically to accelerate the design and deployment of your existing and cloud-first applications – across private and hybrid environments. Learn more by watching this video.

One of the key benefits of moving to the cloud is that someone else–your service provider–takes care of the day-to-day management of your technology. You can focus on adding value at a higher level. Scale capacity and increase your company’s productivity by introducing new capabilities such as collaboration applications or desktop-as-a-service.

Unfortunately, not all clouds are created equal. The success of your business relies upon the quality of the services you choose. You might not experience the level of losses Best Buy did when their site went down on Black Friday, but unplanned downtime can still seriously hurt your business.

The technology inside the cloud services you use really does matter. When you buy commodity-class services, you have no guarantee of the performance, reliability, or even availability of your business-critical data and applications.

This is why Intel and Cisco are working together to deliver enterprise-class cloud services you can rely upon. These two leaders offer more than just promises. Both companies have a long history of proven quality and reliability. Services built upon their technology provide fast time-to-market, offer assured performance, and leverage ongoing innovation.

This assurance of quality is extended to your service provider as well. Cisco identifies cloud providers meeting its highest standards with the Cisco Powered logo. These partners must undergo a rigorous third-party audit to verify that they are able to deliver as promised. This means your services are also protected with end-to-end security. And, with the rise of the Intercloud, you’ll benefit from workload portability between clouds and the ability to comply with local data sovereignty regulations.

You trust Intel and Cisco inside your data center. Now you can trust them inside your cloud services. Intel and Cisco. Connect with confidence.

Each week, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco Partner Ecosystem news and stories, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Check out her blog for an overview of last year’s launch, a look at what Cisco has accomplished since then and a view forward of what to expect next as we head toward Partner Summit 2015.

Let’s Talk Firsts and Lasts

In case you missed it, John Chambers blogged this week looking back at the 30 year history of Cisco. It’s a nice trip down memory lane for many of us, and a quick history lesson for the rest. John also takes a look at what to expect during the next thirty years. Be sure to check it out! Read More »

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